


The Dragon on the Wall

by slightlytookish



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: A Song of Ice and Fire fusion, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:25:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlytookish/pseuds/slightlytookish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin sighed; they'd only just reached the Wall that morning and it really wouldn't do for Kilgharrah to slaughter someone on their first day, even if that someone clearly was a complete idiot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dragon on the Wall

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU/fusion with A Song of Ice and Fire. For anyone unfamiliar with ASOIAF or worried about spoilers for Game of Thrones, I didn't borrow much - only the fact that there is a Wall in the northernmost part of the kingdom, which is guarded by the men of the Night's Watch. The rest is all Merlin canon (and the boys are 16 years old).

Someone grabbed his ear and twisted it cruelly. Merlin yelped and stumbled, his feet slipping on the ice, and behind him he heard a laugh.

"You'd better keep your ears wrapped properly if you don't want to lose them in this weather. You'll need a lot of cloth, though." The boy twisted his ear again in the other direction.

There was a sudden rush of wings and the stranger cried out, letting go of Merlin's ear and falling to the ice with a satisfactory thump. Merlin spun around and saw Kilgharrah standing on his chest, talons digging into his shoulders and baring his teeth so that his breath smoked the air in front of the boy's startled, frightened face.

Merlin rubbed at his smarting ear and sighed; they'd only just reached the Wall that morning and it really wouldn't do for Kilgharrah to slaughter someone on their first day, even if that someone clearly was a complete idiot.

"Kilgharrah, come here," he said, and the dragon snapped his jaws once more before climbing off the boy and coming to Merlin's side.

He plopped down in the snow, the heat from his body melting the ice beneath him, and Merlin stroked his scaly head. Kilgharrah was the size of a large dog now and growing every day, but Merlin still remembered the afternoon that he'd found him, newly hatched by the riverbed and no bigger than Merlin's hand, though he already had the temper of a fully-grown dragon. Merlin had immediately tamed him, thinking nothing of the unfamiliar words that had suddenly spilled unbidden from his tongue, and had returned home with Kilgharrah perched on his shoulder and feeling quite pleased with himself.

He hadn't understood why his mother had wept at the sight of Kilgharrah, but when her tears finally slowed she'd told Merlin that he would have to leave, that it was one thing to hide his magic as he had done all his life but quite another to keep his powers a secret with a dragon at his side. The people of Ealdor wouldn't understand and they would be frightened of him, and of Kilgharrah, and so they needed to go to the Wall, beyond the reach of the king and where every man's past was forgotten when he became a brother of the Night's Watch. And that was how Merlin found himself at the northernmost part of the kingdom, farther away from home than he had ever been, with a still-growing dragon at his side and a boy glaring up at him reproachfully from where he was sprawled on the ice.

"What's this?" A voice rang out across the courtyard and Merlin looked up to see one of the brothers approaching. It was Kanen, the master-at-arms, an imposing man with a scarred face and what appeared to be the jaw of some kind of animal hanging around his neck. He had a history of raiding villages and Merlin recognised him at once; he'd raided Ealdor several years ago, before the knights of Camelot had caught up with him and he'd been forced to choose between death and taking the black.

Luckily he didn't seem to remember Merlin as the scrawny village boy who had hid in a tree and pelted him with rocks in a failed attempt to drive him from the village. Kanen looked between Kilgharrah and the disgruntled boy still lying on the ice and began to laugh.

"This is fitting," he said. "The Dragonlord and the Pendragon! Come on Princeling, on your feet. Someone give the Dragonlord a sword. It's time for him to begin training."

"Pendragon?" Merlin repeated stupidly. " _You're_ Prince Arthur?" He'd heard about the prince taking the black - _everyone_ in the kingdom had heard about it - and of the scandal it had caused at court, but he hadn't had much time to consider how he'd feel when the king's own son learned that the newest brother of the Night's Watch was one of those pesky sorcerers that his father had been trying to eradicate for the better part of the past twenty years.

But right now Arthur didn't seem too concerned about Merlin's magic. "What's it to you?" he snarled as he got to his feet. He unsheathed his sword and twirled it around in a showy way that was probably meant to intimidate Merlin.

It worked. Merlin accepted the sword that one of the other boys handed it to him and then promptly dropped it on the ground in his nervousness. Some of the boys began to snicker, led by Arthur himself. Merlin bent down to retrieve the sword and found Kanen standing on the blade.

"No magic," he said. His grin made him look even more menacing. "I want to see your natural fighting skills, Dragonlord."

Merlin wanted to say that magic _was_ his natural skill, that it was something he'd been born with and not something he'd studied, but he didn't want anyone to think he was making excuses - especially Arthur, who looked so very smug.

"Wait over there, Kilgharrah," was all he said, pointing to the edge of the courtyard. The dragon obeyed and the boys that had been standing there quickly made themselves scarce.

"If you're ready," Arthur said, sounding bored. He didn't wait for Merlin to answer, but charged forward with his sword swinging.

*

Merlin lost spectacularly.

It was one thing to play at being knights with Will. Spending long summer afternoons in the woods and hitting his opponent with a stick hadn't quite prepared Merlin for fighting Arthur Pendragon with a real sword and with an audience of one smirking master-at-arms and a dozen shouting boys.

Arthur didn't treat it like a game or even like the practice bout that it was, and he didn't seem to care that it was painfully obvious that Merlin had never been taught to wield a sword. He went at Merlin as though he'd been trained to kill since birth - which, incidentally, he had been, as he so proudly boasted after he'd knocked Merlin's feet out from under him and had the tip of his sword pointed at his throat.

"Do you yield?" he demanded. His gaze briefly darted over to Kilgharrah, who was growling loudly and not looking at all pleased with the way the fight had gone. Arthur suddenly didn't look so self-satisfied. "I think you'd better, before your dragon tears my head off."

"So?" Merlin said, because he'd never really learned how to think before he spoke and he wasn't going to start now. "It would be an improvement."

Arthur blinked at him, surprised, before he threw his head back and laughed."You can't talk to me like that, you know," he said, but he sheathed his sword and offered Merlin a hand up.

After a moment's hesitation Merlin reached out and clasped Arthur's hand. He was wearing thick, sturdy leather gloves that felt soft and smooth beneath Merlin's scratchy woollen ones and he easily pulled Merlin to his feet. He studied Merlin then, looking at him up and down as though he were inspecting a horse or a piece of land, and Merlin felt his face growing hot as he waited to see what Arthur would do to humiliate him next.

But Arthur must have approved of whatever he saw because he nodded. "You'll do," he said, as if he were the master-at-arms instead of Kanen, and clapped Merlin on the back so hard that he nearly knocked him to the ground again. Merlin clung desperately to Arthur's hand but he needn't have worried - Arthur hauled him back to his feet and kept one hand under Merlin's elbow, his touch light but steady, as if he were escorting a lady to a feast. The thought made Merlin blush even harder.

"If you two are finished holding hands like little _girls_ ," Kanen said with a sneer, “we'll get on with the training session. Dragonlord, you're with me. I want to see if you're always so useless with a sword."

Merlin hurried to his side and for the rest of the afternoon he tried to concentrate on Kanen's directions whilst pointedly ignoring the other boys training alongside him - Arthur in particular. But every so often he thought he felt a heavy gaze at his back, and when their training was over for the day he finally gave in and took a peek over his shoulder and saw that Arthur was watching him from across the yard.

Arthur gave him a nod of recognition, which made Merlin blush again for some reason he couldn't quite explain. And then Arthur smirked, like he'd _expected_ it, which only made Merlin more flustered. He quickly looked away, feeling embarrassed and annoyed with himself for being so ridiculous.

But as he turned away he caught a glimpse of Kilgharrah watching them closely and looking oddly content. He heard the dragon's voice in his head, then, as clearly as if he were speaking aloud.

_You can't choose your destiny, Merlin._

Kilgharrah had said that before, on the day they had left Ealdor for the Wall. Merlin had dismissed him then but now he looked across the yard at Arthur, met his eyes again, and smiled.

This just might be the sort of destiny he could live with.


End file.
